Snyder, Zilpha Keatley (5 page)

Eyelashes and Ceremony

they wouldn’t be forgotten. At first the records were on ordinary notebook paper, but then Melanie, whose handwriting was the nicest, put it all down on onionskin paper rolled on pieces of an old fishing pole they’d found in the alley. Each page was glued on two pieces of pole so it could be rolled and unrolled like a papyrus scroll. Someday, they decided, they would do it all over in hieroglyphics, when they’d found time to finish their hieroglyphic alphabet, but for the present it was just written in English. Then, when Marshall discovered that the wooden base of the Diana statue was hollow, and one side was a little loose, they had a perfect secret vault for the storage of sacred records.

Of course the temple and the two altars had to be decorated, too. It wasn’t at all difficult to find the right sort of things for the altar of Nefertiti-Isis. Flowers, candles, beads, pretty stones, blown glass figurines of birds and deer, in fact, anything beautiful, seemed to suit the lovely goddess. One day Melanie brought her poster paints and they painted stars and birds and flowers on the fence in back of the altar; and another day they made a canopy to hang above Nefertiti’s head. They made it from an old fluffy half-slip of crinoline and lace, but when they were through cutting and pinning and tacking, it looked exactly like a canopy and not like a petticoat at all.

Set was more of a problem. For a while he had

only his incense burner, which Was made of an old metal ash tray. April suggested that they might find something suitable in the Professor’s store, but Melanie wouldn’t go with her to help her shop. Melanie had lived too long in the neighborhood and been almost brought up on all those scary rumors about the Professor. And besides, she said, what could they buy for fifty cents, which was about all they could scrape up at the time. So Set had to settle for some spiders and snakes painted on the wall behind him, and a dry bone that hung on a string above his head. April had gone to the trouble of tricking an unfriendly dog out of the bone because it was so large and sinister looking; and it had just the right effect hanging there over the evil god, twisting and turning in the wind.

Then one day on the way to school Melanie found a strange dark stone. It was lying in the middle of a sidewalk where a stone had no reason to be; but even more mysterious, when you held it at just the right angle it looked exactly like a pair of long pointed jaws with a bulging snout and jagged teeth.

“There’s no doubt about it,” April said, “it’s no ordinary rock, that’s for sure.”

So they put it on the altar, too, and called it the Crocodile Stone, and from then on it became the mysterious and powerful source of much of Set’s power.

Eyelashes and Ceremony

At first Marshall only watched everything that was going on, but after a while he began to be impatient and wanted to know, “When are you going to play about the pharoah some more, like you said?” When April told him they wouldn’t be ready for that for a long time, his chin began to stick out. So, to keep him happy, they let him start being a sort of junior high priest. At the next ceremony, which was to be the presentation of a dead lizard as a sacrificial offering to Set, Marshall marched at the head of the procession and sprinkled holy water from a tuna can. He did a good job, too, except that he wouldn’t put Security down, not even to be a high priest.

At first April said nobody could be the high priest of an evil god with a toy octopus hanging around his neck, but she finally agreed they could pretend it was some kind of a fancy ceremonial robe. And when the procession was over she had to admit that Marshall had done awfully well, for a little kid. “He even remembered all the words to the chant and he sprinkled in all the right places,” she said wonderingly. But Melanie wasn’t surprised at all.

“That’s the way with Marshall,” she said. “He’s been awfully grownup ever since-oh, since about the time he started walking. That is, about everything except Security. I guess he’s not very grownup about that. Dad says the reason Marshall needs Security is

that he had such a hard time being a baby. Dad says being a baby offended Marshall’s dignity.”

April shrugged. “Heck, I guess everybody has something they’re not very grownup about,” she said.

Neferbeth

NEAR THE END OF SEPTEMBER A NEW GIRL MOVED into the Casa Rosada. Her name was Elizabeth Chung. She and her mother and two little sisters had rented the little semi-basement apartment next to where Mr. Bodler, the janitor, lived. Caroline went down to call on Mrs. Chung the evening the family moved in to see if there was anything she could do to help them get settled. She asked April if she wanted to go along to meet Elizabeth, but April said, “No thanks.”

When her grandmother came back upstairs, April found out all about the new family. Mr. Chung had died recently and his wife was going to have to get a job to support her three little girls. She had moved to the Casa Rosada because it was only a few blocks from where her parents lived. Mrs. Chung’s mother

was going to take care of the two smallest girls while she was at work.

“Elizabeth is only a little younger than you and Melanie,” Caroline said. “Perhaps you could ask her to play with you. She’s probably feeling lonely and worried about starting in at a new school.”

April was ambushed by a quick pang of sympathy, remembering how it was-missing someone and having to face a new classroom. But she pulled herself together and shook it off. It occurred to her that Caroline ought to know that you didn’t pick your friends just because they were handy-or even lonely. You picked them because you thought alike and were interested in the same things, the way she and Melanie were. “How old is she?” she asked, letting her eyes go narrow.

“I think her mother said she was nine,” Caroline said.

“Nine,” said April, with a cool smile, “is a lot younger than eleven.”

“Well, of course, it will have to be up to you and Melanie to decide,” Caroline said calmly, but as she turned to leave the room April was sure she heard a rather exasperated sigh.

April tried to feel pleased about the sigh, but something prickled uncomfortably. She decided she didn’t want to think about it. She called to Caroline that she was going down to talk to Melanie. Melanie would

understand how impossible it would be to invite someone else to be part of anything so private and secret as .

Mr. Ross called, “Come in,” when April knocked. He was sitting on the couch surrounded by books and papers. He was studying to be a college teacher and he always had a lot of work to do in the evenings. He was a big man with dark brown skin and a teasing smile. He was always kidding April about her name. When April opened the door he said, “Just as I thought, it’s springtime. Melanie! the crudest month is here.”

Mr. Ross was going to teach things like poetry and literature, and he was always making jokes that weren’t very funny unless you knew what he was talking about. That “cruelest month” business, for instance, was something he was always kidding April about. It didn’t make any sense to April until Melanie found out about it and explained. It seemed, it came from a big long poem that started out about how April was the “cruelest month.” April still didn’t think it was any riot, but she guessed it was okay for that kind of joke.

As soon as the girls were alone in Melanie’s room, April brought up the subject of Elizabeth. Sure enough, Melanie’s mother had been after her, too, to make the new girl feel at home.

“I don’t know what they think we can do,” April

said. “We can’t let her in on . She’d be sure to fink about it and ruin everything.”

“Well, we’ll have to get to know her first,” Melanie said, “and see if she’s the kind who can keep a secret. And then-“

“Keep a secret!” April interrupted scornfully. “For one thing, she’s only nine years old.”

“Well, Marshall’s only four,” Melanie said, “and he doesn’t ever fink.”

“Marshall’s different,” April said impatiently. “This Elizabeth is probably just like any other blabbermouth fourth grader.”

Alarmed at what seemed to her to be a rather wishy-washy attitude on Melanie’s part, April didn’t go home until she felt sure they had reached a firm decision. No matter what, no new girl was going to be let in on . If they asked Elizabeth to walk to school with them, and maybe talked to her at recesses for a while, until she got around to making fourth-grade friends, that would be enough.

The next morning April and Melanie went dutifully down the little dark basement hallway and knocked on the door of the Chung’s apartment. Almost immediately the door across the hall opened and Mr. Bodler, the janitor, looked out. “Oh, hello there young ladies,” he said. “Thought I heard someone knocking on my door.”

“Hello, Mr. Bodler,” Melanie said. “We’ve come

to get the new girl and take her to school with us.”

“Well now, isn’t that nice. I think that’s right nice of you young ladies.”

April and Melanie turned back to the Chung’s door, but Mr. Bodler went on standing behind them. They exchanged sideways “wouldn’t you know it” glances. Mr. Bodler was a fattish man with faded blond hair who was always nosily cheerful at children. The situation was already uncomfortable, and Mr. Bodler, who was a naturally uncomfortable person to be around wasn’t making it any better.

The door of the Chung’s apartment was finally opened by a very small Chinese girl. ”Hi,” April said. “Is your big sister ready for school? We’ve come to take her.”

The girl smiled shyly. “I’m Elizabeth,” she said.

On the way to school Elizabeth walked between April and Melanie. She really was amazingly tiny for a fourth grader. Her thick black hair was pulled back into a carefully curled pony-tail that bounced when she walked. And there was something about the carved perfection of her face that made her smile seem like magic-an enchanted ivory princess warming suddenly to life. She was shy, but not in the stiff embarrassing way that makes other people feel embarrassed, too. It was a gentle friendly shyness that made other people feel important, sort of in charge of things.

April had been afraid-well, looking at Elizabeth’s upturned face and pretty tilted eyes, wide with wonder at almost anything you told her, it was hard to remember just what she had been afraid of. She almost wished she hadn’t been so convincing when she talked to Melanie the night before about how they didn’t want anbody else butting into their friendship.

By the time April and Melanie delivered Elizabeth to the door of the fourth grade room, they had completely forgotten that taking care of Elizabeth had been anybody’s idea but their own. Melanie’s forehead wrinkled with worry as she watched Elizabeth make her way timidly through the noisily assembling fourth graders, to the teacher’s desk. And a couple of boys who were saying, “Hey, look at the new girl!” and, “Ugh! A girl!” and other typically fourth-grade remarks, were suddenly silenced when they met April’s ferocious glare.

That afternoon April and Melanie walked Elizabeth home and by the next morning they were both wondering if it wouldn’t be all right, after all, to let her join . But it was a touchy sort of thing to bring up, not knowing for sure how the other one felt about it. And then a very strange thing happened.

Elizabeth had arranged to meet them that morning on the front steps of the Casa Rosada and when April, and Melanie were crossing the lobby they could see her through the glass of the front door. She was sitting on the railing and looking off up. Orchard Avenue so her profile was towards them. All of a sudden April grabbed Melanie’s arm. “Look!” she whispered.

“What?” Melanie whispered back.

“Elizabeth,” April said. “Who does she look like?”

Melanie caught her breath. “Nefertiti,” she breathed.

Sure enough. Elizabeth’s pony-tail pulled her hair

back away from her face and neck; and there was certainly something about her delicate, slender-necked profile that was very like the statue of Nefertiti. Of course, Elizabeth’s nose was a tiny bit shorter and maybe her chin a little rounder, but the resemblance was there just the same.

She saw them then and bounced through the door to meet them before anything more could be said, but it wasn’t really necessary. April and Melanie just looked at each other and nodded, and on the way to school they started telling Elizabeth all about .

Prisoners of Fear

ELIZABETH TURNED OUT TO BE JUST WHAT needed to make it perfect. Of course, she didn’t have many ideas; but then, she was younger and hadn’t had a chance to learn much about ancient history. Besides, April and Melanie had almost more ideas than they could use anyway. Elizabeth helped in other ways.

She was just crazy about every part of the Egypt Gartie, and she was full of admiring comments. For instance, she loved the1 “Hymn to Isis” that Melanie had made up almost by herself, with just a little bit of help from a book of Egyptian poetry. Elizabeth said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard. And the first time she saw April do a ceremony for Set she kept jumping up and down with half-scared excitement. For a few days it was fun just doing everything over for Elizabeth to appreciate; and after that they got around to starting a new part of the game. In the new part, Marshall finally got to be the young Pharoah, Marshamosis, again, and Elizabeth was the Queen, . April and Melanie were priestesses. First they were evil priestesses, leading Marshamosis and into the clutches of the wicked Set. And then they were priestesses of Isis coming to the rescue.

That was about where they were in the Game, when something happened that almost put an end to ; and not to alone, but to all the outdoor games in the whole neighborhood. On that particular afternoon, the girls had built a dungeon out of cardboard boxes in the corner of the storage yard. Elizabeth and Marshall were languishing in the dungeon, tied hand and foot, victims of the priests of Set. April and Melanie were creeping cautiously from pillar to pillar in the Temple of Evil, on their way to the rescue. Melanie was crouching behind an imaginary pillar, when suddenly she straightened up and stood listening. In the dungeon Elizabeth heard it too, and quickly untied her bonds. April ran to help Marshall with his. They were really only kite string and knotted easily. From somewhere not too far away, perhaps the main alley behind the Casa Rosada, Mrs. Ross’s voice was calling, “Melanie! Mar-68